I work in my office on the campus of the University of Texas. It's the sort of place described as 'book-lined', but it's recently tipped over into 'fire-hazard' territory.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
That space between the white lines, that's my office. That's where I conduct my business.
Anyway, in my writing I've always been interested in finding places to stand, and I've found it very useful to have a direct experience of what I'm writing about.
Firefighters go where they're needed, sometimes ignoring the dangers even when no one is inside a burning building to be saved.
It is your business when the wall next door catches fire.
I'm not one of those professors whose office is encased floor-to-ceiling with books. By the way, I think academics do this to intimidate their visitors.
In the little town where I live in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, we now have a 'Public Safety Complex' around the corner from what used to be our hokey Andy Griffith-esque fire station.
I spent the majority of time at school trying to break the rules. I would climb to the top of buildings; I even burned a building down once - not intentionally, just because I was interested in fire. I remember going through the rule book, ticking off the ones I had broken and looking for the ones I hadn't.
I always laugh at these companies that have these rules saying, 'You're only allowed to have this or that on your desk.' It's no fun to work at a place like that.
I have a lovely office at the back of my house; it's an old stable and you can see right out to the countryside on one side and into the house on the other side.
I work in our living room, a strange room in a strange, topsy-turvy house. I work underneath this enormous bookshelf.